Not long after the sun rose above the trees and buildings lining Main Street Tuesday morning, it illuminated a small but significant fixture a block away.

Approximately 100 people gathered at the intersection of NW 1st Street and NW 8th Avenue to observe the unveiling of a street sign gaining an additional name: Charles S. Chestnut III Avenue. The designation officially applies to 8th Avenue between NW 6th Street and Waldo Road, including the stretch of road in front of Chestnut Funeral Home, which Chestnut operated for six decades.

“Certainly this is a, I hesitate to call it, a historic occasion because the history has already been made by Mr. Chestnut,” Gainesville Mayor Harvey Ward said at the event. “What we’re doing today is recording it for future generations to be able to see; we’re creating part of an open-air history book so that the history can be researched and learned, but the history has already been made.”

Chestnut, 83, died Dec. 4. He is credited with leading the Gainesville Civil Rights movement as the president of the Alachua County NAACP Youth Council. Voters in 1976 elected him as the first Black member of the Alachua County School Board and to the Alachua County Board of County Commissioners in 1992.

Chestnut’s wife, Gainesville City Commissioner Cynthia Chestnut, described him as a “humble man” who never would have expected to see his name featured on a street sign.

“This was very moving,” Cynthia Chestnut said of the ceremony. “I’m very moved by all of this because it’s not what I had expected, and I’m just bowled over by everything that’s happening in his name. But he would be so surprised and so happy. And I thank the citizens of Gainesville for honoring him in this way.”